Archdiocese = Roger Cardinal Mahony =
Posted on 07/15/2006 3:25:36 PM PDT by NYer
At a small Catholic church south of Los Angeles, the pressing moral question comes to this: Does kneeling at the wrong time during worship make you a sinner?
Kneeling ''is clearly rebellion, grave disobedience and mortal sin,'' Father Martin Tran, pastor at St. Mary's by the Sea, in Huntington Beach, Calif., told his flock in a recent church bulletin. The Diocese of Orange backs Tran's anti-kneeling edict.
While told by the pastor and the archdiocese to stand during certain parts of the Sunday liturgy, a third of the congregation still kneels.
`ACT OF ADORATION'
''Kneeling is an act of adoration,'' said Judith M. Clark, 68, one of at least 55 parishioners who have received letters from church leaders urging them to get off their knees or quit St. Mary's and the Diocese of Orange. ``You almost automatically kneel because you're so used to it. Now the priest says we should stand, but we all just ignore him.''
The debate is being played out in about a dozen parishes.
Since at least the seventh century, Catholics have been kneeling following the Agnus Dei, the point during Mass when the priest holds up the chalice and consecrated bread and says, ''Behold the lamb of God.'' But four years ago, the Vatican revised its instructions, allowing bishops to decide at some points in the Mass whether their flocks should get on their knees. ''The faithful kneel . . . unless the Diocesan Bishop determines otherwise,'' says Rome's book of instructions. Since then, some churches have even been built without kneelers.
In the Archdiocese of Miami, kneeling is still the norm. A diocesan policy on kneeling states that ''it is desirable that a uniform gesture of reverence be observed by the faithful gathered to celebrate the Eucharist.'' The policy notes that the faithful should kneel after the Sanctus until the end of the Eucharistic Prayer, and after the Agnus Dei until they approach the altar for Communion.
The debate is part of the argument among Catholics between tradition and change. Traditionalists see kneeling as the ultimate posture of submission to and adoration of God; modernists view it as the vestige of a feudal past they would like to leave behind.
At the center of the controversy is the church's concept of Christ, said Jesuit Father Lawrence J. Madden, director of the Georgetown Center for Liturgy at Georgetown University in Washington.
Because the earliest Christians viewed Christ as God and man, Madden said, they generally stood during worship services to show reverence and equality. About the seventh century, however, Catholic theologians put more emphasis on Christ's divinity and introduced kneeling as the only appropriate posture at points in the Mass when God was believed to be present.
Things started to change in the 1960s, Madden said, when Vatican II began moving the church back to its earliest roots. What has ensued, he said, is the predictable struggle of an institution revising centuries of practices.
The argument over kneeling, Madden said, is ``a signal of the division in the church between two camps: those who have caught the spirit of Vatican II, and those who are a bit suspicious. Because it's so visible, what happens at the Sunday worship event is a lightening rod for lots of issues.''
One flash point involves the Agnus Dei. Traditionalists argue the faithful must then fall to their knees in awe for several minutes, believing that the bread and wine are literally the body and blood of Christ.
Lesa Truxaw, the Orange Diocese director of worship, said Bishop Tod D. Brown banned kneeling because standing ``reflects our human dignity. It's not that we think we're equal to God, but we recognize that we are made in the image and likeness of God.''
Orange County parishioners are still allowed to kneel at other points in the Mass, including the Eucharistic prayers. Kneeling is optional as worshipers receive communion.
No less an authority than the pope is on record as favoring kneeling. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, who became Pope Benedict XVI last year, wrote in The Spirit of the Liturgy, published in 2000, that the gesture, ''comes from the Bible and the knowledge of God.'' He has not addressed the issue since becoming pope.
American Catholic bishops have taken the opposite position. ''Standing can be just as much an expression of respect for the coming of Christ,'' said Monsignor Anthony F. Sherman, a spokesman for the liturgy secretariat of the U.S. Bishops Committee on the Liturgy based in Washington.
That hasn't quieted the opposition.
''It's hard to understand why any bishop would prohibit his people from expressing reverence in the way they have done for centuries,'' said Helen Hull Hitchcock, a founder of the conservative Adoremus Society for the Renewal of Sacred Liturgy in St. Louis.
The controversy at St. Mary's by the Sea began to intensify late last year after Brown appointed Tran to lead the 1,500-family parish. Tran took over following the retirement of the church's long-time pastor, who had offered a popular traditional Latin Mass.
Tran's Mass reverted to the more modern English form practiced in most American churches, and hundreds of parishioners signed a petition in protest. Then, in an effort to pull the church into the modern era, the priest told members they were not to kneel following the Agnus Dei.
Many refused to comply. ''Not kneeling would be sinful,'' said Manuel Ruiz, 45, ``because that is what I believe I should do.''
`SETS US APART'
Mary Tripoli, 54, a former member of the parish council, was dismissed for her insistence on kneeling: ``Standing may be reverence, but kneeling is adoration. It's the one thing that means Catholicism throughout the world. It's what sets us apart.''
At least two altar boys, the parish altar servers coordinator and three members of the parish council have been dismissed from their duties for kneeling at the wrong time, according to parishioners.
Angered by the anti-kneeling edict, a group calling itself Save Saint Mary's began distributing leaflets calling for its return.
Tran responded in the church bulletin with a series of strident weekly statements condemning what he called ''despising the authority of the local bishop'' by refusing his orders to stand, and calling the disobedience a mortal sin, considered the worst kind of transgression, usually reserved for acts such as premeditated murder.
Archdiocese = Roger Cardinal Mahony =
What a dolt.
What is that guy smoking?
Now I have officially heard everything!
ping
Coming soon:
Left-handedness will cause you to burn in Hell.
What foolishness! The Church, and it's Shepherds, have nothing better to do than argue over the posture the worshippers adopt during certain parts of the Mass? Wrong!
I'm sorry to say this is nothing new. My family was approached during Mass by ushers who very forcibly told us that we were not allowed to kneel. I was told that this was all in the spirit of returning the Church to its roots. I replied that when they decide to celebrate Mass in catacombs they should call me. I know, I know, but they just got on my last nerve that day. No problem with an assistant in the childrens religious program being an advocate for abortion, oh no. Just my family kneeling.
Are all the folks in the picture giving the Nazi salute?
Geez, this is wrong on so many levels, particularly the Diocese agreeing with them. Kyrie Eleison!
I think it's more of a "Talk to the Hand" Mahony!
"....particularly the Diocese agreeing with them."
Another example of an "in communion" diocese leading its members to act contrary to church law.
When will this sorry-a$$ed excuse for a bishop be excommunicated?
LOL. That's what I thought.
Yeah, me too. We have some rebellious Bishops in the U.S.
Seems like on the Left Coast there are any number of things they would like to leave behind to be up with the times in the spirit of VII. I'd rather them just leave behind the Church and call themselves anything but Catholic.
How many Angles can dance on the head of a pin?
Kneeling is a mortal sin?
I would be looking for another Catholic Church...stat!!!!
OK, I bite. What ARE they doing in the picture?
They keep trying to slide off the seat in the pew and the spacing is just not there for kneeling.
Note this to have more sympathy for them next time.
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